


False Cognates

by scarlet-kingsnake (high_spring_tide)



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Hennike, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Smaurent, Unsolicited sex advice, auguste - Freeform, because I don't like to think of Laurent as being sad at the summer palace, brief scene of past Damen/Jokaste, but I'm considering it a canon au, featuring cameos from, mutual pining while dating incompetently, nikandros - Freeform, technically canon compliant, the Prince's Guard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:36:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24464323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/high_spring_tide/pseuds/scarlet-kingsnake
Summary: The meanings behind courtship gifts are different in Akielos and in Vere. And Damen, in trying to court Laurent with all the grace and courtesy he deserves, ends up sending entirely the wrong message.
Relationships: Damen/Laurent (Captive Prince)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 435





	False Cognates

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this tumblr post](https://not-a-coral-snake.tumblr.com/post/618660811115823104/much-as-i-love-fics-about-damen-courting-laurent) of mine. I borrow pretty freely from it, although the tone ended up being slightly different in this version.

The first time Laurent really thinks about courting, it’s because some lady has sent Auguste a handkerchief. And, in so doing, somehow sent his entire family into crisis. 

He’s dimly aware of the particulars--Auguste is the crown prince, so who he marries is an affair of state, as much a matter for his parents and the council to ponder as it is for Auguste to decide. So it’s exceptionally bold for this lady, whoever she is, to make the first move. And judging by all of the consternation, nobody considers her an appropriate candidate for Auguste’s hand. Their father has been badgering Auguste for days about whether he’s done anything to encourage such a thing. 

The handkerchief, when Laurent sees it, seems a very small thing to cause such a fuss. It’s just a square of white damask with a star embroidered on one corner. A shooting star, rather than the eight-pointed star on Auguste’s banners, but close enough. It’s worked in plain yellow thread rather than the gold thread on Auguste’s own handkerchiefs. 

“It’s so simple,” Laurent tells Auguste when he catches him looking at it. “Is her family poor as well as strategically insignificant?”

“No, silly,” says Auguste. “All courting gifts are simple, that’s how you can tell your suitor is serious about you. People give flashy gifts when they’re trying to dazzle a stranger or impress a pet. When you want to share your life with someone, you pick a gift that’s understated.”

Laurent thinks that this makes no sense. And then he starts to think, maybe it does. His family has plenty of fancy things, all the riches they could want. But the things that make him happiest are simple ones--the Kemptian fairy tales his mother tells him, Auguste bringing him back an owl feather he found out riding. Maybe it’s like that. Maybe it’s like the time he and Auguste had made their mother a crown of daisies and black-eyed susans, and she’d worn it in place of her golden crown all afternoon. 

A few years pass, and this time, Auguste is courting a different lady. The match already has their father and the council’s tentative approval--what matters now is hers and Auguste’s. Laurent comes back from the stables one afternoon to find Auguste and their mother bent over a twig with several beech leaves, newly opened and still nearly translucent. 

“I’d be  _ cautiously  _ optimistic,” Mother is saying. “Something growing is good, yes, but the leaves are new, and fragile. She might be asking for patience.”

"Still, better than unopened buds, I suppose,” Auguste says, with a smile that most people find charming but just makes Mother roll her eyes. 

The conversation seems to have been going on for some time. Which makes sense--the other thing about true courtship gifts is that they are meant to have layers of meaning. People in love will waste hours and  _ hours _ trying to deliberate the meaning behind a choice of flower or the color of a pastry filling.

“What do you think, Laurent?” Auguste asks, and while what Laurent thinks is that all of this is pointless and silly, he’s proud to have been consulted. Previously, his involvement in Auguste’s love life has been limited to improvising alibis for their father when Auguste has snuck off with a woman. Even at ten, Laurent can lie more convincingly than his brother, so Auguste usually leaves him to do the explaining. 

“Well, beeches are huge and long-lived and solid,” he says, and Auguste and Mother nod--they’ve been over this already. “But for that she could have chosen oak leaves just as well. But nothing else grows under a beech. Maybe she’s hoping for exclusivity?” 

His audience looks thoughtful. It’s an angle they haven’t thought of before, he thinks. “Thanks, Laurent. I’m happy I can come to you for insight about this sort of thing,” Auguste says, clapping him on the shoulder. And Laurent is pleased, because being Auguste’s advisor is supposed to be his job, someday, and he’ll offer whatever advice he can.

Even though courtship is dumb. 

* * *

Courtship, Damen finds, is something of a novel experience.

He’s had plenty of lovers, to be sure, but most of them he pretty much just fell into bed with. With Jokaste, he can already tell, it’s going to be different. 

She wants him, he’s fairly sure, but is determined to make it a challenge nonetheless. He wonders if he should be irritated by this; instead he finds it rather invigorating.

He wonders how best to impress her. He finds that he knows relatively little about her--her interests, her likes and dislikes. Her passions. He’d been so taken by her, ever since their first meeting. And now he finds that the consequence is that the strength of his feelings has run ahead of his familiarity with their object. 

Still, he supposes that that’s all right. Courtship gifts are, at their heart, meant to be grand gestures, the value of the gift a sign of how greatly the giver values the recipient. There would be time for more nuanced gifts later, once Jokaste understands the depth of his feeling. 

Damen thinks of Jokaste with pearls at her throat, with the golden strands of her hair held up with combs carved of lapis lazuli the same color as her eyes. He smiles. 

* * * 

If Laurent were to be completely honest with himself, he’d admit that he was afraid that courtship would not come easily to him.

He’d seldom considered it, over the years, supposing that any personal involvement would be a side effect of a political marriage arranged should he survive to be twenty-one. There had been few chances to consider it in abstract terms, either. Romance, as an entity separate from pure hedonism, had been decidedly out of fashion at his uncle’s court. 

And he knows himself to be pragmatic, and unyielding, more inclined to sarcasm than to softness. So it comes as a surprise to him, how natural it feels to pluck a flower and place it in Damen’s hair. To accept the flower Damen gives him in return. To walk with him, hand in hand through the gardens. 

The next day, Laurent watches, eyes still heavy with sleep, as Damen blinks awake beside him. Damen smiles at him, and the quiet contentment in that smile sends a shiver of warmth through Laurent. This already feels so familiar, he realizes, and the magnitude of that would be frightening if Laurent didn’t see in Damen’s eyes that he feels it, too. “Good morning, sunshine,” Damen whispers.

“I’ve brought you something,” Laurent says, and hands him a bowl of apricots. 

“Like at Heston’s estate,” Damen says, and Laurent is pleased he remembers. “The day I asked you to come here, with me.” 

“And now here we are,” Laurent says. 

“Here we are,” Damen echoes, smiling, and takes a bite from an apricot.

“I have something for you as well,” Damen says, some time later. “Only we’d have to get up for me to show you.”

“Hmm,” Laurent says, shifting onto his side. “Perhaps later?”

“Later,” Damen agrees. 

It is mid morning when they finally get up and dress, and Damen leads Laurent out to the stables. There’s a particular horse it seems Damen wants him to see, a magnificent blue roan. She blows on Laurent’s proffered hand, and lets him pat her neck, and when Laurent turns back to Damen he’s obviously waiting for Laurent’s approval. “She’s lovely,” he says.

Damen beams. “She’s yours,” he replies.

“For today?” Laurent asks. 

“For always, if you like her,” Damen says, smile growing wider, and  _ Damen’s gift for him is a horse?  _

Laurent knows that people say he treats fencing like a conversation, but he’s always found that the inverse is sometimes true as well. There are times when talking is like fencing, when in a moment of clarity, the comfortable predictable exchange falls away and you realize you’ve misjudged the other man’s approach entirely. And then you parry, and you buy time while you figure out how to properly respond. 

“Thank you,” he says, because it’s better than saying “But I thought you loved me.”

They go riding. The horse is indeed good, which is fortunate because Laurent spends the entire ride deep in his thoughts, and on an unfamiliar horse and on unfamiliar ground that’s a dangerous thing to do. But now, everything else about the situation feels foreign as well. And it’s unfair, truly it is, that learning that Damen isn’t serious about him should seem to overturn the whole world. Laurent hadn’t even known him six months ago. 

But now he finds he must reconsider the meaning behind everything, the promises they’d made to each other, the things Damen had said. All the inane things Laurent had said, the day before, the flowers, the apricots. Damen wants a relationship that is fleeting, that is centered on physical desire, and here’s Laurent, prattling on about eternity and devotion and--

And Damen doesn’t want a serious relationship with him. Or, rather, he doesn’t want a serious personal relationship with him. The ink has already dried on the first of a series of treaties meant to unite their countries in alliance, to intertwine them as an empire. Politically, their relationship has a seriousness attested to in hours of negotiations and the witness of the Council and the kyroi. Laurent wonders how Damen envisions the future. Are they to be co-rulers for life and casual lovers for as long as it suits him? Spend their days resolving disputes as respected colleagues and their nights having meaningless sex? 

It hurts, to think that all Damen saw in him was a crown and a pretty face. But then, that’s all anyone had seen in him in years. It wasn’t Damen’s fault that he had been the one to make Laurent begin to believe that was more than that. 

He wonders, briefly, if there’s some mistake or misunderstanding. Damen is a king, and perhaps to him a horse does seem like a modest gift appropriate for a serious courtship. Perhaps this is even meant as some kind of arrogant display of wealth--look at the endless riches of the Akielon crown, that Damianos can give away a warhorse as a mere trifle!--but no, Damen is not an arrogant man. And even in Vere, where luxury is celebrated far more than in Akielos, Laurent has never heard of such a thing.

No, the true explanation is the simple one. Damen doesn’t want a serious relationship with him. And Laurent can come up with as many convoluted alternatives as he wants. He’s always been good at lying to himself. But it doesn’t change the truth, and he’d be better off accepting the circumstances presented him and deciding on a response. 

In the end, he realizes there isn’t much to plan or determine. He’d be happier with whatever affection Damen wants to give him, no matter how limited, than with none at all. And those things that Damen does want, Laurent wants too. So it’s easy, in the days that follow, to sit beside Damen in the cool of the summer palace’s library over a map, speculating about new trade routes instead of potential battlefields. And it’s easy, when Damen hooks his calf around Laurent’s under the table, or shifts his hand from Laurent’s knee to his thigh, to take Damen’s hand and pull him to their bedchamber. It’s easy to accept Damen’s invitations to go riding, or sailing, or for a walk along the shore, even as he desperately tries not to read into the look in Damen’s eyes feelings he knows aren’t there. 

* * *

Laurent had been quiet, the first afternoon they went riding together at Lentos. Damen hadn’t thought much of it, at first, had thought that perhaps Laurent was captivated by the beauty of the landscape unfolding around them. Or perhaps simply tired. Neither of them had gotten much sleep the night before. 

But he is quiet over dinner that evening, too, and seems a bit withdrawn the next day as well. It’s a slight difference, in the way he carries himself, the tone of his voice. Damen suspects that no one else would even notice a change, but Laurent has always been good at hiding, and it’s enough to make Damen worry. 

Pretty soon he thinks he knows the cause. Laurent, without question, loves the horse Damen gave him. That much is clear from the way he handles her, speaks to her, stays late in the stables to brush her and feed her lumps of sugar. But he seems struck by melancholy whenever he sees the horse nonetheless. His shoulders stiffen, and there’s something wistful about his gaze. 

It was probably a mistake to give Laurent a horse, he realizes. He thinks of the horse the regent had poisoned back at Arles, the horse Laurent had, with twenty human lives hanging in the balance, had no choice but to ride to death. Auguste had trained that horse, and Damen finds himself wondering if he had trained Laurent’s other horses as well. Of course it was hard for Laurent to accept a horse from him. What he had meant as a sign of their future together had, instead, been a reminder of everything Laurent had lost. 

Little wonder Laurent seems distant, now and again. But his withdrawal is incomplete, and it is temporary. As the days go by, Laurent seems quicker to smile, less hesitant to take Damen’s hand in his. And Damen knows that what is between them is not lost. He’ll take things slowly, now. Pressing Laurent when he is upset about Auguste has never brought them anything but grief. But he knows he can fix this, can put their courtship back on solid footing. And he knows that in time he will. 

They return to Ios for several weeks of diplomatic negotiations before Laurent’s planned return to Arles. Here, Laurent throws himself into work, spending the days working through the minutiae of taxation regimes and commercial regulations. It’s hard, sometimes, to draw him out of whatever report he’s reading or whatever correspondence he’s drafting. But the nights they spend together, and Damen supposes the days will grow less busy in time. He supposes it’s only natural Laurent should behave like this. In Arles, he must have been working constantly simply to maintain ground against his uncle and his supporters. It’s still a new concept to Laurent, being secure enough to take time for his own enjoyment during daylight hours.

Damen does his best to steal moments for them to relax together. He coaxes Laurent out for walks in the gardens, for an evening spent listening to poetry rather than researching agricultural yields. One day, he convinces Laurent to spend an entire afternoon wandering with him through the city markets. They admire merchants’ wares and watch street musicians. Laurent practices his Akielon vocabulary. They turn it into a sort of game, with Laurent trying to list the items on each table, Damen trying to find things he doesn’t know the name of yet, both laughing. Damen buys Laurent a plate of loukoumades drizzled with rose syrup, and the look of startled joy on Laurent’s face almost makes him drop the tray.

With things going well again, Damen thinks it’s a good time for another gift. He’s already commissioned a manuscript for Laurent, the text an Akielon epic but the manuscript itself made with the intricate scrollwork and illuminated capitals of Veretian books. But that won’t be ready for months. And in the meantime, he ought to give Laurent something else, something to make up for his misstep with the horse. 

Jewelry is a classic courtship gift, of course, but here Damen hesitates. Laurent would be a vision adorned in gold or diamonds or sapphires, but Damen has never known him to wear jewelry except in disguise, not even the restrained pieces the Veretian nobility allowed themselves. And, he supposes, he’s not sure exactly where the line between jewelry worn by nobles and jewelry worn by pets falls in Vere. He doesn’t rule the possibility of buying Laurent jewelry out entirely, but he supposes they ought to talk about it first.

In the end, Damen settles on a chess set, carved from obsidian and moonstone and set with precious stones. 

Laurent’s face, oddly, seems to shut down when Damen presents him with the chess set. “Is this a gift of state?” he asks.

Damen lets out a surprised huff. “No, it’s a personal gift,” he says, and kisses Laurent’s temple, and wonders why the corners of Laurent’s mouth tense a bit in what looks like resignation before he smiles and thanks him. 

Laurent is scarce for the rest of the evening, and Damen wonders if the idea of someone wanting to give him a personal gift is still so strange to Laurent. Perhaps this explains some of his discomfort over the past few weeks. If he had been thinking of Damen’s gifts as gifts of state, etiquette would require a reciprocal gift in kind, and it would weigh on Laurent that he, far from his own lands, had nothing of comparable expense to give Damen. And come to think of it, Laurent has stopped offering the whimsical gifts of flowers and fruit that had so pleased Damen. 

It was very like Laurent, to worry about accepting a gift he couldn’t at once repay. He was still so unused to kindness. His was a world where everything came at a price, and it is not easy for him to imagine that Damen would do something just to make him happy. It is not easy for him to imagine that he is someone anyone could care about. Damen intends to remedy that, no matter how long it takes.

* * *

It had occurred to Laurent one day, as he adjusted the laces at his wrist to fit more comfortably over the gold cuff, that that, too, was a gift from Damen. A gift of terribly valuable and wildly ostentatious jewelry, wholly inappropriate as a courting gift, but one which Laurent hadn’t interpreted along those lines, because it had been given as a gift of state. Actually, it was wholly inappropriate as a gift of state as well, but that wasn’t the matter at hand. 

The matter of hand was that perhaps he had misinterpreted what Damen meant by the horse. Expensive gifts were appropriate as gifts of state. If that was the case, Laurent had committed a moderate breach of etiquette by not offering a comparable gift in return, but well. He would gladly work to mend a diplomatic embarrassment if it meant that Damen’s intentions towards him truly were serious. 

And it would explain much. There has been, over the last few weeks, considerable dissonance between the message clear in Damen’s courtship gift and his behavior towards Laurent. Damen, Laurent had always believed, was always almost unfairly easy to read. And the way he looks at Laurent, the way he always seems to want to be at Laurent’s side, even if they’re both just reviewing documents--well. If nothing else, it’s making it extremely difficult for Laurent to temper his hopes. 

So when Damen presents him with a chess set, clearly the work of master artisans, made of semi-precious stones and inlaid with gems, he finds himself asking him without even the slightest pretense at subtlety if it’s a diplomatic gift. 

And Damen says no, and Laurent berates himself for nurturing false hope against his better judgement. Damen beams at him because he is happy, content now that he has returned to his proper place in the world. He is kind to Laurent because he is a kind person. There is nothing special or mysterious about it.

He wishes that there was someone he could talk to about this. Courtship gifts are meant to be talked about, their form appreciated and their meaning speculated over with friends and family. Laurent remembers his mother telling him and Auguste about how disorienting it had been to receive Veretian courtship gifts in Kempt, where none of her ladies knew what to make of them. In Kempt, courtship was a matter of words, in letters, conversations, and occasionally serenades and--ohh. Could it be that simple?

“Do Akielons court through the presentation of gifts?” he asks Nikandros the next day. He and Nikandros have developed out of necessity a tolerant and professional working relationship shortly after their arrival in Ios. _ Friendly  _ isn’t yet quite the word to describe their relationship, but Nikandros is generally happy enough to answer Laurent’s questions about Akielon culture. Still, reminders of Laurent and Damen’s relationship do tend to put him on edge. 

“Mainly,” he says.

“And the nature of the gifts bears significance in indicating the nature of relationship desired by the gift giver?” Laurent says.

Nikandros says yes, and changes the subject. 

It makes sense, Laurent supposes, that Akielos and Vere should share customs around courtship when Kempt and Vere do not. It was one kingdom once, he thinks, and tries to pretend that doesn't hurt. 

* * *

Something is wrong, Damen thinks, and what frightens him is that he doesn’t have any idea what it is. Given the timing, he half-wonders if it’s something to do with the chess set. Laurent, he knows well, tends to overthink things. He remembers the intricacy with which the Veretian court ornamented every surface, and wonders if to Laurent’s Veretian eyes the chess set had seemed unacceptably plain. He’s not worried that Laurent would take offense at insufficient ornamentation in itself. But he doesn’t want to inadvertently signal, through too poor a gift, that Laurent means anything less than the world to him. 

He seems to have lost all of the ground he’s regained since their return from the summer palace. There are days when Laurent looks surprised that Damen even wants to talk to him, wants to hold his hand as they walk the palace grounds. 

Laurent will be leaving in a little over a week, now. There’s time for Damen to give him perhaps one more gift while he’ll still have the chance to see Laurent’s reaction in person, and he promises himself he’ll get it right this time. 

* * * 

Laurent finds that the worst part is the uncertainty. If he knew for sure how Damen felt, he could perhaps succeed in coming to terms with it, could bury hope once and for all. Could move on to preparing for the future together Damen seems to want. Right now, their arrangement is not so bad, but if Damen’s gifts are to be believed, Laurent ought to be steeling himself for the day not so far from now when Damen will find someone else young and fair and graceful, and then they will be nothing other than colleagues. 

He should accept that now, he knows. It’s foolish not to. But he’s also spent enough time at a court of dissemblers to know that it can be dangerous to ignore someone’s actions and posture and expressions when they don’t line up with their words. 

It’s not that he thinks Damen is lying to him. But he’s heard enough during these weeks in Ios to suspect that Damen, for all his long list of prior lovers, is relatively inexperienced in matters of the heart. He wonders, is it possible Damen loves him but does not yet realize it? It is common, he knows for people to mistake lust for love. Surely it can happen in the other direction as well. 

And if Laurent is good at lying to himself, then Damen is good at outrunning his emotions. Laurent had seen it strike Damen, all at once and months too late, that his father was gone. That he would be--was--king. Maybe someday, a revelation about his feelings for Laurent would strike Damen with equal force. 

Or maybe Laurent is once again lying to himself. He cannot tell if he is assessing the likelihood of a genuine possibility, or letting his emotions invent possibilities that are not there. Damen has always defied his ability to plan. 

Still, if there is a chance, no matter how slim, that Damen will one day feel as strongly as Laurent does, Laurent will not be the one to crush that chance. Forget embarrassing himself; it would be far worse if Damen realizes the strength of his own feelings only to doubt Laurent’s. 

So the afternoon before he is to leave for Arles, he walks to Damen’s rooms with one last gift. It is a whelk shell, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand and washed half translucent by the movement of the sea. He’d found it as they walked on the beach their first day at the summer palace. 

Damen’s whole face lights up when he sees Laurent, and Laurent has to stop for half a second because he wants too much. Wants to run into Damen’s arms, wants to present him the shell, wants to tell him everything. For all that that’s more or less what he’s come here to do, he doesn’t trust emotions this strong. 

“I was just about to come find you,” Damen says. “I have something for you, before you leave.” He hands him a plain wooden box, a little shy. 

Laurent turns the box over in his hands, taking a moment to anticipate. He’s not sure if his heartbeat has ever been this fast. The box is well made, but simply carved of unfinished wood, and inside--

“Well? Open it,” Damen says, and Laurent can hear that he is as nervous as Laurent himself. 

And inside is--inside is a sailing boat the length of Laurent’s outstretched hand, a miniature of the skiffs they had taken out at the summer palace, fashioned of mother-of-pearl and silver filigree. There are pearls along where the rail of the boat would be, and hung from the silver threads of the boat’s rigging like lanterns are white crystals. Diamonds, Laurent realizes. He feels ill. 

“Thank you,” he says, and after a lifetime in the court at Arles he is no stranger to feigning graciousness, feigning gratitude, but the words sound flat even to him. Damen notices; Laurent sees the hurt in his eyes. But Laurent is sick of burying his own feelings for the sake of Damen’s. Maybe he’ll come around someday and maybe he won’t, but Laurent isn’t going to throw himself at him like some moonstruck flower girl. 

So he makes some inane excuse about urgent but previously-forgotten business he must attend to before his departure and leaves, the little shell still wrapped up safe in his pocket. 

* * *

Damen is adrift. He’s lost Laurent, somehow. Or no, not yet. But he’s on the brink of losing him. He’s lost, already, their easy conversations, the moments of playfulness Laurent would sometimes allow himself. 

And physically, Laurent will be gone by sundown the next day, and Damen will not see him for weeks or months. If he could not repair whatever is wrong in person, what chance does he have through letters?

He finds he cannot sit still, and heads down to the training yards. It’s early evening, and the yards are not quite deserted, with a group of Akielon soldiers practicing spear throwing on one side and members of the Prince’s Guard sparring on the other. Damen joins the Veretians. He might as well take advantage of learning their fighting style while he has the opportunity.

He goes a few rounds against Jord, then asks Lazar, who knows more dirty tricks than anyone else Damen has ever met. It’s enough to distract, if not to get Damen’s mind off of things entirely.

Which Lazar notices. “You’re upset,” he says, after Damen has knocked him on his ass five or six times.

“Yes,” Damen says, shortly, and blocks Lazar from grabbing yet another concealed blade. 

“Is it about the Prince?” Lazar says, and then, when Damen doesn’t reply, “Can’t say I envy you, I suppose. Who knows what’s ever going through that head of his?”

_ Who knows,  _ Damen thinks. If only he knew why Laurent was pulling away, then he could fix it. But there are no signs, as far as he can tell, no patterns--except--

“Could I ask you something?” Damen says, signalling a break. 

“At your majesty’s service,” Lazar says, flopping onto the sawdust. 

“I. . . could use advice, I suppose,” Damen says. “On how things are going with the Prince.” It’s sensible to consult a Veretian, he thinks. Probably he ought to have done it long before. He just wishes that Veretian wasn’t Lazar. But Lazar is, well,  _ something  _ to Pallas, and therefore might have useful perspective. 

“Of course, happy to be of use,” Lazar says. “Is it an issue of reliability or of stamina?”

“What?” says Damen, confused. “No, that’s not what--” He forces down a ridiculous impulse, born of habit, to insist that he is not fucking the Prince. 

“Ah, your mouth, then? You might find your throat relaxes more if you press your thumb firmly against--”

“It’s not about that!” Damen says, cheeks hot and glad the other guardsmen are now some distance away. Then, to remove any possible ambiguity that could prolong this conversation, “It’s not about what we do in bed.”

“All right,” Lazar says, sounding a touch skeptical, or maybe just confused about what else he could possibly be asked to offer advice on. 

“I’ve been. . . trying to court him,” Damen says, the admission sounding almost pathetically childlike after Lazar’s assumptions. “But I’ve done something wrong, and each gift seems to drive him further away.”

“Ah,” Lazar says, sympathetic. “Nobles are fussy over that sort of thing, reading sixteen meanings into each box of sweetmeats. You probably just picked out an impolite color, or something. What’d you get him?”

“When we went to Lentos, I gave him a horse,” Damen says. He tries to think of any details that might be important. The horse’s age? Its color? 

Lazar winces theatrically. “So, that’d be it, right there.”

“What’s it?” Damen says. 

“Well, by giving him a horse, you’re basically accusing him of being a whore, so that’s your first mistake.” 

Which makes no sense at all, except-- “Is it like pets?” Damen asks.

“I suppose? Anyway, anything anywhere near expensive as a horse isn’t a courting gift per se. It’s more like an ‘I-sure-like-fucking-you’ gift.” He pauses. “I take it from the look on your face that’s not what you were going for?”

Damen grimaces. “So what is a courting gift, in Vere?” he says. 

Lazar does his best to explain, but having only been in the Guard and around the nobility a few months, his knowledge is somewhat scanty. The rest of the Veretians, when they wander over, each have a couple of examples or suggestions, and Huet, whose sister is a lady’s maid, has more. Jord seems to have a knack for parsing what’s true and what’s merely court gossip. By the time Damen thanks them and heads back inside, he feels he’s once again on surer footing. 

* * * 

“Damen finally settled on what to give you, then?” Nikandros says, frowning at the box in Laurent’s hands. 

He’d been waiting to talk to Laurent when Laurent returned from Damen’s rooms. They’re still in the exchanging-pleasantries part of the conversation, and until this point it’s been generally pleasant so far. 

“Oh, don’t look so despondent,” Laurent says, holding up the little boat. “It’s not like this means that much.”

“That boat has a fortune in pearls on it, how much more could you want?” Nikandros says.

And Laurent shouldn’t rise to that, he knows better, but he’s just so sick of making do with whatever crumbs of affection Damen throws his way, of pretending that’s all he wants. So he says, “Ah yes, who could hold higher ambitions in life than to be the king of Akielos’s fucktoy.”

Nikandros stares at him, glances at the sailboat, stares at him again. “This is one of those needlessly-inscrutable Veretian things, isn’t it.”

And Laurent feels, again, a faint upwelling of hope. “You said in Akielos, the nature of courting gifts had meaning. Tell me how that works, exactly.”

* * *

Three weeks later, Laurent sits at his desk in Arles, turning an envelope over and over in his hands. The first diplomatic correspondence from Ios since his departure has arrived, and with it a personal letter. 

His last night in Ios, after his talk with Nikandros he had headed back to Damen’s rooms to find him. Damen had had the same idea, and they’d run into each other in the corridor.

There had been a moment of awkward silence, which Laurent, as technically the party in the wrong, had felt compelled to be the one to break. “I’ve been speaking with Nikandros about the particulars of Akielon courtship customs,” he said. “It seems we’ve been misunderstanding each other.”

“Yes, I just got through a similar conversation with Lazar,” Damen had said. 

“Lazar?”

“Yes, he wouldn’t have been my first choice.” 

And then Damen had tried to explain what he had really meant by his gifts, and Laurent had tried to tell him why he’d been withdrawn, and they’d been speaking too quickly and talking over each other and so hadn’t been able to hear each other well. But they’d understood each other nonetheless. And so after a minute or so they’d given up, and Damen had kissed him, and Laurent had wondered how he’d ever doubted him. 

“So much for courting you with grace and courtesy,” Damen had sighed. “Give me a second chance?”

“We have time,” Laurent had said, and kissed him again. “The rest of our lives.” 

He’d given Damen the seashell, with the promise of a more suitable gift later. Upon his return to Arles, he’d commissioned a set of map weights in opal and gold for Damen, to be sent with his reply in a few weeks. 

He opens the envelope, and puts aside the letter at first in favor of opening the smaller paper packet within. It’s filled with morning glory seeds. 

Morning glories grow quickly, Laurent thinks. When he plants these, they should be producing shoots after a few weeks. They cling fast to whatever they grow on and to each other. They are found all through the meadowlands along Akielos’s south coast, and will flourish under even the most adverse of conditions. They come in many colors, though Laurent suspects that when he plants these they will bloom blue, because Damen has a weakness for his eyes. 

They bloom at the beginning of a new day. 


End file.
